“Lemon Glow”

In 2015, when Beach House surprise-released their most recent album, Thank Your Lucky Stars, it felt like a natural evolution of the Baltimore duo’s lush sound. It was hard, though, to ignore the creeping sense of inertia—Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally’s polished, almost predictable progression was beginning to lose its momentum. “Lemon Glow,” the first single from Beach House’s forthcoming, as-yet-untitled seventh album, feels like a new direction for the band, with subtle changes to their distinct sound that signal a sharpening of the band’s typically soft edges.

Released late on Valentine’s Day, “Lemon Glow” is another entry in Beach House’s canon of makeout music; it’s a song about the thrill of intimacy, a breathless hymn to emotional connection. Atop a bed of the duo’s trademark organ and drum machine, Legrand sings about a lover with newfound rawness and lyrical clarity: “It’s what you do/This pulls me through/I come alive/You stay all night,” she sings. A metallic, strobing synth line constantly pushes the song forward; distinct and acidic, it adds a constant tension to the piece, a harshness that hasn’t felt present in the band’s sound before. As the song layers and builds, the synths become more urgent, finally reaching an ecstatic peak as a bass drum pounds. The song’s abrupt end comes as a shock; Beach House songs have always found beauty in a perfect synthesis of motion and stillness, but “Lemon Glow” is pure propulsion.